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Dessert

Gingerbread Cakes

A sweet, spiced cake made with molasses, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gingerbread Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a cup, combine hot water and butter until melted.

  2. Fill the cup with molasses and pour into a bowl.

  3. Add ginger, cinnamon, and baking soda to the bowl.

  4. Stir in enough flour to form a stiff dough.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into square tins or muffin pans.

  2. Bake carefully until done.

  3. Let cool completely, then cut into squares.

  4. Optional: Ice with plain frosting if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides the dark color, rich sweetness and moisture that give gingerbread its character.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lift the cakes and help them rise and brown.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the stiff dough together as the cakes set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a softer crumb.

The step that matters

Bake carefully until done. Gingerbread cakes can dry out or turn gummy in the center if over- or underbaked. Checking for doneness, such as a toothpick coming out clean, helps the crumb set without drying.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, molasses, cinnamon, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses, cinnamon, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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